As you’ve probably heard, the number of people crossing the southern border is finally headed down. After a peak last December of just over 300,000 border encounters, July dropped to 104,116. That’s the lowest number since February of 2021, the first full month Joe Biden was in office, when the total was 101,099.
The way the Biden administration accomplished this is that is stopped allowing people to game the asylum system. Well, stopped is too strong a word but it made it less easy. Today the NY Times explains how. It all has to do with what the asylum system calls “manifest fear.”
Under the new rules, border agents are no longer required to ask migrants whether they fear for their lives if they are returned home. Unless the migrants raise such a fear on their own, they are quickly processed for deportation to their home countries.
So under the old system, the migrants would find a…
